a bibliography of strings
by concreteskies
Summary: AU for 7x15, "Reckoning". "You are still yourself, Kate. That hasn't changed."


**a bibliography of strings**

* * *

He finds her sobbing two days later. She's kneeling in a mess of broken glass, shards as sharp as teeth and her knees are torn open, skin used to breaking. Blood mingles with tears in between the fragments of mirror glass on the white-tiled floor and he doesn't really know how to look at her eyes without thinking that they shred her even more than the glass.

Her slender fingers grasp at her foreign cheeks, at the skin that doesn't feel like hers anymore, at those puzzle pieces Kelly Nieman has forced upon her. She grasps at the skin that is now her own, nails digging deep, leaving crescent half-moons on her still bruised skin and he hates that she has a galaxy of pain drawn across her skin and that he can do nothing to turn it into earth.

Her stomach is all quivers and trembles as fierce as the sea and he doesn't know how she holds herself up when everything inside her is an inferno. But then again she has always been the strong one.

She has always been the one with the back of steel and a skin that has mended itself as often as it has been broken.

She looks up at him when he kneels down in front of her, right into the wreckage of glass and pain and her lips hold a slight tremble and he wishes he could kiss her and make her forget all that aches inside.

"I keep looking," she says on a tiny whisper that is barely her voice and he feels himself breaking apart around the sound "but I can't find myself."

He just reaches out then, brushes stray strands of now brown hair behind her ear and looks at this face he still doesn't recognize either.

She flinches away from his eyes whenever they caress her skin. It's as if with every look on her new skin he's punctuating the fact that none of this will change, that she is now stuck in this foreign skin and that her reflection will only ever show the twisted mask of Kelly Nieman's legacy anymore.

That her reflection is forever wiped of her mother's cheekbones and her father's smile.

He doesn't know what to say. He doesn't know how to speak either. And so he just opens his arms and prays that he can hold her until the shivers subside, that if he hugs her tightly enough he can take away some of the pain, that his eyes can be enough to tell her that things will be okay.

* * *

She doesn't allow even an inch of light in the bedroom. Even three weeks after Kelly Nieman has altered her face so entirely she still takes great care of having the bedroom bathed in absolute darkness.

He thinks she needs the darkness to be herself. That she can only be still when her face doesn't glare back at her from every reflection, from every surface even remotely akin to a mirror.

This morning she broke the coffee pot. He watched her pour the scalding hot liquid into the white cup. He watched her eyes settle on her own and the pot slipping from trembling fingers and spiraling down into a mess of broken ceramic and brown liquid that looked like her hair.

He couldn't find her eyes when they cleaned up the mess together. But he found her hands that still burned with memory and could only hold them tight.

* * *

She turns around in bed, facing him in the darkness and although he can't see her eyes he knows they are filled with a hurricane. Her fingers seem to seek for his, kind of hesitant on the cold sheets in between them, as if nor so sure of their role, despite the muscle memory that is urging them closer to him.

"How do you deal with it, Castle?" she asks and her voice is silent enough not to disturb the darkness.

He takes a moment to think. How do you explain to someone that she is still the world even though one continent has changed formation?

"You are still yourself, Kate. That hasn't changed."

"Everything has changed." Her voice is louder now, carrying through the darkness with a momentum that could tear it apart.

"Kate, you are so much more than your face." he finds the switch and floods the bedroom with crepuscular light that draws shadows onto her features and canyons onto her collar bones.

She scoots away from him ever so slightly, face pressed into her pillow, willing the feathers to soak her up.

"Castle-"

"No, please Kate," his voice is border-lining desperate now, "they may have changed the structure of your cheeks and the lines of your lips but your eyes are still the same."

She shakes her head but still manages to glance up at him through lashes that are dotted with tears.

"Your eyes are still this complete enigma of color. And it doesn't surprise me. You are so much more than just a definite color on the spectrum. Your eyes are like fluid amber in the sun and almost green sometimes in the evening and sometimes they are just everything all at once and I am still trying to comprehend how this is even possible."

"And here," he takes her hand into his and soothes his thumb across the tender skin "your fingers are the same that held mine when I was in the dark alone. Your fingers are the same as when they gave me comfort and some ounce of certainty when I was in holding. These," he traces the callused skin on top of her index finger "muscles still remember that time you put a ring onto my finger."

She smiles, with those lips that always seem a little too tight and strained whenever they curl up.

He then opens her palm softly and his fingers map out the lines carved into the soft skin.

"Your life line is still the same, it's still a little wobbly maybe, but it's yours." He traces the long line like it is braille.

"Your hands are still filled with intention to touch mine." His fingers come up to press against hers before he lets them intertwine in a net of certainty.

"There is still that soft spot on your neck, where the skin is almost like paper and so fragile I sometimes worry it might break like glass." He leans in closer, lips trailing along her neck until they find purpose. "But you have always been one to find strength in fragility."

She moves into him closer again, feet coming to rest between his and they are cold as always but perceptive to his warmth.

"Your thighs are still meant for breaking and your knees are still battered with your own bruises. Your battles are still written all over your skin," his free hand wanders underneath her shirt, trails up along the rugs of her ribs and comes to rest in between her breasts on the patch of jagged skin. "Everything about you screams that you have survived, that you are stronger than fire and ice."

His palm comes to rest above her heart and he feels tears stain his shirt and they feel like forgiveness.

"And Kate your voice hasn't changed either and your lips still curl up when I make a stupid joke." He leans down slightly, waits for her to tilt her head before he traces the lines of her lips with his own. "They still taste like they always have." He mumbles so close to her that the words seem to become hers before they even fall from his lips. "It may feel a little different," he kisses her again, "but they still taste like you, like coffee and good memories and a home and purpose."

He pulls back slightly to get a better look at the way her face is illuminated by the sparse light.

"Kate your entire anatomy is still this map of strength and sometimes pain and sometimes happiness and always love and not even Kelly Nieman could change what is carved into your bone marrow, not even Kelly Nieman could change that every inch of your body says, 'I will not break'."

He feels her heavy breaths caressing the skin of his neck and he feels the way her fingers wrap around his with more certainty again and the way she clasps at his shirt in his back, knuckles brushing the rugs of his spine and he thinks that even with a different face she still has the ability to mold herself into him perfectly.

"You are still you, Kate. And that's why I can deal with your face looking differently, because in then end your face doesn't matter. What matters is the way you hold my hand, and kiss my lips like I am hope and the way your heart beats when I'm around you."

* * *

AN: Because I couldn't not write one. I hope that maybe you liked it.

I also do realize that this will most certainly go completely AU after 7x15 has aired but this is where my mind took me :P

Tumblr: dancingontiptoes

Twitter: AlyssaLucyAnne


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